Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with workexperience

My friend would like to design a chair

urbanwhaleshark — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:47:05 -0800

Apprentice/work experience for London chair designers? I would like to help a friend find some apprentice or weekend-experience work for a London chair designer. I appreciate this is a very specific request. She has no prior experience in the field but is very passionate about it and I'd like to give her as much help as possible. She has habit of finding kicked-about antiques and refurbishing them if that's any help.

If the question is too narrow, please also include furniture restorers and the like.

Best practices for finding a job in the US without US work experience

cimton — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:06:54 -0800

I'm a US citizen, but all of my work experience since I graduated a few years ago has been in francophone countries. I've been thinking about returning to the US, and am uncertain about how best to update my English language resume and, more broadly, how to navigate the job market without US work experience. I'm not sure if it makes any difference, but I'm a woman in my mid-twenties with a BA from a university in the US. For the past few years, I've been working in France and Senegal with non-governmental organizations involved in social service provision and advocacy work, and I would be applying for positions at similar organizations in the US.

(1) When I list an organization on my resume, should I provide a translation of the organization's name? Should I provide some sort of summary of the organization's work? All of the organizations I have worked with have French names and are unlikely to be recognized in the US. That said, all of them are easy to find on the internet.

(2) How should I deal with the fact that most of my potential references are non-native speakers of English with varying degrees of English language competence? I've heard of grad school applicants having letters of recommendation from non-anglophone professors professionally translated--is this something that I should consider, and would translated references be acceptable to US employers?

I would be happy to hear any other advice or personal anecdotes relevant to my situation, and would love to be directed to resources (both online and off) that might be useful.

Working with Kids

Static Vagabond — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:12:20 -0800

I've been asked to look after two work experience kids (young teens) for the coming two weeks to experience and learn what I.T. is all about. What tasks can I give them that will educate and enlighten them while not killing my productivity? I get one per week, so I can repeat tasks for the second one if need be, the important thing for me is they get something out of the experience.

I can't really let them play in the sandpit that is my usual day to day work, as it's mostly dealing with custom systems and touches a lot of confidential information.

Rock meet hard place.

I want to make that time spent as useful for them as possible, and would ideally focus on tasks that are fairly easy to set in motion, then backing off while they explore/complete that task. Then getting involved again at the end to review/problem solve.

So what tasks can you suggest I could give a total newcomer to I.T that helps demonstrate the work of a techy?

I've thought of:

- Reformatting/installing machines. (easy and time-consuming)
- Getting them to install a backup solution on the above, then ripping out the hard drive (as a hardware failure example) and asking them to recover the computer/certain files.
- Software support for the main office workers (word, excel etc) if they're savvy, but I think they're just in the 'hmm.. I.T. might be interesting' stage and we don't generally run into problems with Office.
- Teach them how to make a network cable.
- If I can find a few machines to format, get them to create a little test network, with file-sharing, cross backups etc.
- Create some posters/adverts for the stores (not really I.T...)
- Create a webpage (in Dreamweaver or something WYSIWYG) for some part of our company site, even if it's never published.

Let those ideas flow!

Where is the news?

reklaw — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:37:50 -0800

What are some off-beat sources of local news? So I'm doing work experience at a reasonable-size regional daily, and I've been given a free hand to write more or less what I want. The trouble is, all the obvious news is covered - there are dedicated reporters for the council, crime/fires, schools, and so on. I also don't get anywhere near first pick on the people who call or write into the newspaper or the press releases, and I have pretty much zero contacts in the area.

What should I do? Where should I go? Who should I call? I'm way out of my depth. Any ideas incredibly appreciated. I'd really love to find something that they'll want to use big towards the front of the paper, which generally means good pictures as well as a good story.